A male escort is claiming that he had a sexual encounter with Chris Myers, the Republican mayor of Medford, New Jersey, and he's offering photos as proof. The mayor vehemently denies the allegations, but can't explain how in tarnation that gay male escort got hold of pictures of a guy who looks kind of exactly like him in his skivvies. Magic, I suppose. Gay magic.

The sordid tale allegedly unfolded in October of 2010, when the then-congressional candidate was visiting Orange County, California. The politician allegedly used rentboy.com to find an evening companion, and paid the male escort $500 for sex, showing the escort photo identification and town business cards as proof of his identity (which: why?). There were promises made, emotions ran high, and when the mayor didn't deliver on a promise issued to the escort, the escort took his revenge to the web, dedicating an entire website to the fact that the mayor of Medford is gayer than a cat pageant.

It wasn't until the city government started getting strange, vaguely threatening emails that the case got really wacky. Phillly Burbs reports,

The first email provided no other information, except to call Myers a "mischievous politician" and to give a link to a BCT article from March 2011, where Myers explains his workload would keep him from accepting a post on the Burlington County Bridge Commission...

A second email, sent Oct. 10, included another photo and this text: "Chris Myers is a lying, manipulative, egotistical hypocrite and escort enthusiast. I am proof."

That was followed by an email Wednesday that included a link to the website featuring the photos and a narrative by the man who says he's a male escort and contends Myers was a client. In addition to the photos in the earlier emails, the website has a photo of an ATM receipt for $500 the escort says was his fee. The ATM receipt also shows the balance of the bank account.

The anonymous email sender also shared two phone numbers, one of which belonged to Mr. Meyers.

In his own defense, the mayor said that it was easy for people to find his personal information, as he is a public official. To the story told on the website about the incident, the mayor said that people were crazy! Crazy! for going as far as this crazy man did to try to discredit him. And the pictures? The ones of him wearing only teal skivvies, glasses, and a smile? Uh, Photoshop? He said,

I've been down that road before, where a photo has been photoshopped to look like something it wasn't,

When pressed, he didn't provide any more specifics.

It's possible that everything was fabricated; Myers has had his hands in some projects involving scads of money, and when money's at stake, people will embark in all sorts of craziness. Attempting to blackmail public officials into giving you land contracts is the official state sport.